Discounts do result in extra font sales, but the numbers are very different from first-part discounts on Steam, and the Steam model is largely irrelevant in comparison to fonts. This is because:
• There are literally tens of millions of people capable of buying and playing games using a service like steam. The number of graphic designers in a position to actually buy fonts is in the tens-of-thousands. So there’s a hard limit in how big a font sales spike can be.
• Because the market for fonts is so much smaller advertising budgets are also much smaller. Valve spends millions of dollars to promote its games. No type designer can do that—most type designers are making less money in a year than Valve spends advertising a single game. When Valve has a sale thousands of people are waiting for it. Not many people are just waiting for that one font to go on sale.
• Games are inexpensive entertainment items and there is a constant market for them as impulse buys. Even discounted, fonts are professional tools and usually purchased only as needed. This is why fonts discounts happen mostly during August and December when the design market slows down. Discounts during the rest of the year just eat away at profits on sales that would occur anyway.
• Discounts should be irrelevant to serious designers as fonts are professional tools and their cost should be passed along to clients. Designers with serious fonts budgets aren’t pikers working for clients who nickel-and-dime everything. Constantly experimenting with pricing and promotions to try and dredge up some extra sales from the bottom of the barrel eats up time that could be spent drawing more fonts to sell to serious designers.

Deep discounts is a way to scoop out all fence-sitters and everyone one else on a tight budget who is interested in a product. You seem to be sweeping these people aside and focusing exclusively on "serious designers". That's your choice.

There are not that many "fence sitters" and many of them are not interested in the work that goes into making a respectable font. Even if you achieved 100% of the type market with a 75% price cut, you would be nowhere near a 1470% increase in sales.

Chris, I can tell you that I have a wish list of about 20 typefaces at the moment. And even though I don't need any of them I would gladly buy a half of the list if it went on a 50% sale.

With regards to "not that many fence sitters" - if you have actual numbers, I would be very interested to look at them. Otherwise the only way to gauge them is to try.

Also, keep in mind that this is a short once-a-long-while event. Deep discounts cannot be permanent, because that will just kill the regular sales.

(edit) PS. I am not advocating this approach by any means. It may or may not work. It may or may not be a lot of effort for too little benefit. But the reason I posted this in the first place was that I can see this working on me. I would buy some typefaces that I would have not ever purchased otherwise.

As others have mentioned, the type craving market is small, and while you might have a list of 10 fonts, 99.99% of the world does not.

I used to sell newspaper advertising. It bothered me when people would put an ad in the paper, and then complain that it didn't boost sales. I tried to impress on them that ads work best when the message they have is noteworthy, like a significant sales deal.

I think the other thing works just as well. You can cut prices 75%, but there will be no reaction unless people are made aware of the discount, and it is something that is in demand. The problem is, as others have said, that fonts are not heavily advertised.

It would be interesting if one of the font retailers like FontShop or MyFonts was to run a weekly sale. I suspect that it would result in increased sales. The big question would be: how much?

I don't buy fonts as often as I'd like to primarily because I do mostly web stuff these days. But I have made impulse purchases over the last couple of years...one being James' Recovery (it was at an easy 'impulse buy' price point) and several from Dino's DSType when they had a large sale. Granted, DSType's wares were getting a lot of awareness before the sale, which probably helped.

So, anyways, I am but one fence sitter.

I think the 'non piker serious client' designer is a valid market just as much as the 'freelancer who has an eye on a few faces just because they really like them' market. I think one can market to both using the occasional discount model. Designer A needs a face when they need it. They have the budget to buy it at that point. Designer B doesn't need a particular face, but would like to have it if/when they see a discount.

It's sort of like airfare. M-F the airlines charge what they want as most business travelers will pay whatever because they have to get from point a to point b. Tourists can get a discount by flying weekends and waiting for that occasional discount on a non-full flight.

It would be interesting if one of the font retailers like FontShop or MyFonts was to run a weekly sale. I suspect that it would result in increased sales. The big question would be: how much?

I assumed that MyFonts allowed for setting font discounts already, and I further assumed that pretty much every reasonably active foundry has a Twitter/Facebook/etc account. If they are in fact going to run a 3 day 50% sale event, the news will spread. The deeper the discount, the more the viral effect is going to be.

I do however agree that it is likely to work much better for the pricier fonts that are already well-marketed and that are in demand.

I try to strike a balance between designing/making fonts, and marketing them.
With a little time left over for Typophile, which I find more interesting than Twitter or Facebook.
My business philosophy does not include discounting, for various reasons.

It would be interesting if one of the font retailers like FontShop or MyFonts was to run a weekly sale. I suspect that it would result in increased sales. The big question would be: how much?

A few months back, MyFonts sent out a newsletter promoting ten fonts under ten dollars each—not a sale, simply the regular retail price. Two of my $7.95 fonts were among the ten spotlighted. The result? For me, over $5,000 in gross sales for one week...

Well, I wish they had included one of my fonts!
Paradigm Standard sells for $9, but not a lot of interest in it -- I conclude that it would have been better to make it a freebie, with the upgrade to the Pro version being the money-maker. Perhaps I don't publicize it enough.

A few months back, MyFonts sent out a newsletter promoting ten fonts under ten dollars each…

Maybe we should lobby MyFonts to let us plan our discounts far in advance to all coincide with a monthly discounts newsletter. The MyFonts mailing list is probably a much better option than hoping word will spread through designers, because MyFonts will hit a LOT of non-designers. I would be more interested in discounting with some serious promotion behind it.

I'm a freelancer, for the moment, anyway, with a list of about 20 fonts I'ld like to buy for myself. I graduated 2 years ago, and perhaps unlike a lot of people out there my age, I DON'T think everything on the Internet should be free. But considering the current job market and my all around poorness, a good enough discount would probably be the tipping point to me buying a font that I just want to have. Some are simply way to expensive and a discount isn't going to help, but others...

People who buy videogames buy them with their own money. So a discount makes a big difference to them, and impulse purchases are a normal phenomenon in that market - because a game is something one can have a lot of fun with.

When it comes to typefaces, the way I see it, the market is broken down into a number of segments.

One group is ordinary computer users who would like to have a selection of typefaces to use on their laser printer - other than the limited number that comes with their operating system, or the somewhat greater number that comes with Microsoft Office.

If they purchase Corel Draw, or their computer came with Corel Office, their font requirements would mostly be met, because they would have professional versions of pretty well all the old standbys - Garamond, Baskerville, Palatino, Optima, Cooper Black, Hobo, Papyrus - and would not see a need to obtain more.

The people who would consider spending even $20, never mind $200, for a typeface like Williams Caslon, Starling, Times Ten, Goodchild or even Stone... work for art departments and the like. They're not spending their own money, and they are purchasing typefaces for the specific requirements of a job. Yes, there is a possibility of buying a few typefaces on spec if it's anticipated they'll be useful multiple times in future work, adding to its perceived quality - but price elasticity is still far lower in this kind of market.

This situation may change in future, if typefaces somehow become perceived as more of a fun thing to play with. For example, I could see more ordinary people being in the market for fonts if they were:

a) more likely to be licensed for, and
b) easier to be used in

web pages.

Thus, I think that font foundries are acting soundly by not perceiving the likely results of discounts to be anything like those which would apply in the video game field.

This is not to say that they're necessarily selling an awful lot at high prices either; it seems to me that there are a lot of commercial typefaces out there, only a limited portion of which will ever achieve any significant success. But since there are many typefoundries that appear to be thriving businesses, throwing up their hands and quitting the business doesn't appear to be the necessary solution. They're managing, and they will monitor market conditions and respond to them with due caution.

I’m pretty sure there would be a lot of well-off people left if we could chase off all the people who work for table scraps. Ann Landers used to say that people can only take advantage of you if you let them, and designers should think about that when the clients are trying to nickel and dime every job down to a tiny sliver of a margin.

I'm sometimes guilty of eating table scraps, yet I do manage to purchase fonts. And I don't always buy them for a specific job. For example Actium: I keep going back and looking at it and my consumerist impulses grow in proportion to my available credit.

I think the way some of us think about the value and distribution of fonts is a bit draconian.

We all agree that people's hard work is valuable, and that good fonts are worth money. That isn't debatable.

What Steam does for videogames is outstanding. Steam sells millions of games in an age of piracy and penny pinching. People happily spend their hard earned money on games because the games are good and the prices are amazing. Steam's christmas sale, for example, had games from 60-90% off. Good games too. I personally purchased dozens of games that I haven't even played yet just for the fact that they were great games and the prices would never be cheaper.

Do video games take a lot of time, talent, and resources to create? Yes. Are good videogames worth money? Yes. Are the distributors, creators, developers, or game community the lesser for selling their games at a heavy discount? Absolutely not.

Perhaps a great font like Bembo isn't something I would purchase. I have other nice serifs that do a fine job. Now, if the Bembo family went on say for say, $20 I would be extremely likely to purchase it because it becomes an incredible value for me.

Stop with Stream, just stop. Forget about the games. Don't anchor there, look at a larger picture.

There are different categories of buyers, especially for such a niche product as fonts. If you are pricing your fonts too high, you are aiming at agencies and missing out on individuals. If you are pricing your fonts too low, you are getting to the "mass market", but commoditizing the font, making it less appealing to the larger agencies. Why you guys are so resistant to the idea of scooping up low-budget buyers once a year with a deep discount sale (not 5-15%, but 50%... something that would make an impulsive purchase an absolute no-brainer) - that frankly I don't understand. $60 per weight should get you a flow of well-budgeted customers, and $5/weight would get you a burst of those who are ready to pay you less, but pay no less.

Also, this is an excellent opportunity to develop a mailing-list (or Twitter, or Facebook) following that can be further used to market new designs and what nots. Just put a small plug on a website saying "we have a deep discount sale once a year, sign up if interested". Guess how many of those who really like the font, but find it too pricey will not sign up? A rhetorical question.

When FontFont released Ernestine* in mid-December they offered
it at 75% off for two weeks. From what I can tell that was the first
time they tried this. I'm not permitted to share the numbers, but
apparently FF was happy with the results. Personally I'm waiting
for the 2012-Q1 numbers to see whether getting the publicity and
an established base out there has had a domino effect (although it
might still be too early). In any case, to me it's much better to offer
a steep discount either at the very beginning of a typeface's life or
after it flatlines; the last thing you want is customers watching and
waiting for discounts...

1. The big guys who buy lots of seats and often custom fonts. They need more exclusivity to ensure brand imprint. They need broad worldwide language support and numerous weights along with support and back up. They frequently work with established houses that can come to them with options, do testing, and offer after sales service.

2. Large publishers or advertising groups who may need some exclusivity but for a shorter time span and perhaps not quite in the custom market. but need a bit of hand-holding. Need good language support but perhaps only one script.

3. Graphic designers, freelancers, smaller publishing shops, who need very little supplier input but have much price negotiation with their own clients. They may not need exclusivity but they can make multiple uses out of one purchase for work after the initial use of the type. Some students edge in to this area who will shortly carry their catalogue of type to freelance usage. This group needs a broad range of things but not always. They may need display faces with limited weights but book faces with a broader spectrum of choices. They don't expect to pay for after purchase service but need rock-solid products which just plain work as expected. Reasonable price but with expectations for multiple use drive them but mostly, their client's needs.

4. One timers, hobbyists, scrap bookers and some students who just like the stuff but may never be in a position to make money from it. These folks have limited language requirement and limited weight usage. They buy on a whim and assume type should be almost free. They make no money from type, it is more recreational for them. Quality is often not recognized by this group and the certainly make use of free type. They are the least technically savvy and may not even be sure how to load a font and determine if it is working properly. Cheap price and high novelty drive them.

Does one price fit all? No... But neither does value and quality and service.

If you want to make money on volume, design type for group 4. Make it cheap and don't dwell on it much. Think of it as a consumable with little longevity and no sense of quality. Release very often and batch bunches of your older faded stock with slash/cut sales. You don't need a sales force or much of a craftsman's sense of pride to sell here.

For number one, big guys, you need a core of operations that can handle these clients--in other words an investment in staff, and capital as well as a good base of connections and clients who "know you". You can make money here too but you need a big investment to do well. The work must be quality work but not too leading edge to appeal to the market. This is a collaborative approach. You need to understand business and be able to work with different sets of people. This is not the place for someone who just wants to design nice type. This is a place for a business head and a process thinker who has access to all the other pieces of the puzzle.

The other two groups are tougher to pin down because boundaries get fuzzy quickly. These guys want great design because that is what they assume they do. They need a mix of both innovative and workhorse type. They need to be able to more than cover type costs with usage but do not have deep pockets. They prize quality highly but can't afford boutique prices.

Which is the most lucrative market? Depends on who you are as supplier. Can you deliver the goods that are needed? Can you support the client segment? do you have access to the client segment in a usable way? What satisfies you? in the "make money vs design great type for your own sense of pride" continuum. You have to know who you are and what motivates you as well as who your market is and what motivates them.

Align yourself with the market that fits you. Are you a big profit guy or a "love of craft guy"? You need to go for the mix that you can live with as a person and live on as a human being. Mix and match if that is you but realize that every venture has some sort of price for some sort of reward. The price and reward can be either monetary or pride, whatever floats your boat. Just be able to accept what you wish and work for with all of its ramifications.